Marin CountyVisitors Directory

Across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, Marin County is an
unabashed introduction to Californian self-indulgence: a pleasure zone of
conspicuous luxury and abundant natural beauty, with sunshine, sandy beaches,
high mountains and thick redwood forests. Often ranked as the wealthiest county
in the US, Marin has attracted a sizeable population of wealthy young
professionals to its swanky waterside towns, though in the past the region
served as logging headquarters.

The largely undeveloped Marin Headlands , across the
Golden Gate from San Francisco, afford some of the most impressive
views of the bridge and the city behind. The coastline is much more
rugged than it is on the San Francisco side, and it makes a great
place for an isolated clifftop scramble, in among the concrete remains
of old forts and gun emplacements. Heading west on Bunker Hill Road takes you
up to the brink of the headlands before snaking down to Fort Barry, and wide,
sandy Rodeo Beach , from which numerous hiking trails branch out. Check in at
the Marin Headlands Visitor Center

The westernmost tip of Marin County comes at the end of the Point
Reyes National Seashore , a near-island of wilderness bordered on
three sides by over fifty miles of isolated coastline - pine forests
and sunny meadows hemmed in by rocky cliffs and sandy, windswept
beaches. This wing-shaped landmass is a rogue piece of the earth's
crust that has been drifting steadily northwards along the San Andreas
Fault, having started out some six million years ago as a suburb of
Los Angeles. When the great earthquake of 1906 shattered San
Francisco, the land here, at the epiCenter, shifted over sixteen feet
in an instant, though damage was confined to a few skewed cattle
fences.

From the east peak of Mount Tamalpais,
a quick two-mile downhill hike follows the Temelpa Trail through
velvety shrubs of chaparral to the town of MILL VALLEY , the oldest
and most enticing of the inland towns of Marin County. This was
originally a logging Center, from where the destruction of the
surrounding redwoods was organized, but for many years the town has
made a healthy living out of tourism and October's annual Mill Valley
Film Festival, which draws area stars and up-and-coming directors
alike.